I will never get how Liberals think . When is too many people coming to live in this country . When we are living on top of each other ? Question:do liberls want no border control and let all of the world that decides to head to the UK come and go as they like . It must be one or the other . Which is it .

The Lib Dem collapse is surely nothing to do with Europe. They were the middle-class-but-with-a-social-conscience party for those who found both the Conservatives and Labour unplatable (for different reasons), but given a taste of power they fold like a cheap deckchair and make their supporters chose either the devil or the deep blue sea.

Also, how does it follow that voting an anti-EU party inidcates people are fed up with 'mass immigration'? How, from the many factors of EU membership, do you manage to ascertain that is the one causing problems?

Well I thought I asked a simple question, but apparently not simple enough for you.



Leaving aside your inability to ask a clear question, I'd invite you (again) to view the EU as a formative USA. Nobody worries about, say, how many people from Delaware are going to live in Texas, because it's a ridiculous thing to worry about.

And so it is here. A free market, a single currency and centralised regulation mean that, inevitably, over time things will stabalise. We'll be a richer, stronger, more European culture for mingling and it will seem stupid as backward to support the UK leaving the EU as it would to support California leaving the US.

So, yes, I support open borders within the EU and for migrants and asylum seekers outside the EU, our hands are tied by international law, which leaving the EU will have no impact on.

Oh, and FFS, we're not living on top of each other. About 10% of the UK is developed, we could fit another 10 million people in here without even struggling.

The main problem with immigrants appears to be that they come here, work, remain fit and healthy, pay taxes, don't take as much from the social services as the locals do, don't need pensions for thirty or forty years... oh wait, are these problems?

The big issue in the UK is nothing to do with immigration - it's far more to do with cost of living and in particular the cost of housing. Which need solutions, to be sure, but which are nothing to do with the language spoken by the people who will live in them.

Space wise. Housing, the NHS, Education and other infratsructure would collapse without significant expenditure and expansion.

The uk is effectively over populated, oversubscribed and as a result the average man on the street is suffering in one way or another, it's difficult or near impossible to get into doctors or dentists, hospital appointments, jobs now seem to be cheapened as employers are now taking advantage of the excess supply of people, possibly helped by the recession! Businesses are generally doing very well out of this

We need a points system and restrictions on numbers also perhaps a reform in benefits to hopefully deter the immigrants that just want to come to rip off the benefits system and only attract the ones that want to make a new life here and contribute to the country with tax and NI

I do not want to leave the euro but if no control is brought back, in years to come we will have hardly anything left to be shouting about

The USA is huge and I think a better comparison would be the thousands of Mexicans that try to migrate to the USA! I'm certain the Americans are quite vocal about that

Oh ffs without a massive build of houses ,hospitals ,schools and roads this is not possible . Do you seriously think any party is going to do this just so millions more can come here . NO never going to happen .This is one reason why immigration should be limited .

Sorry, but this is just a big "reckon"! Where are ANY facts to back it up. "Man in the street" anecdotal assertions based on what fits with your worldview. I don't mean to be dismissive, but you can't base an immigration policy on bar-room calculations.

Ok i answer this one slower for you . The USA is one massive country . People dont move around in the hundreds of thousands as they do here in europe . They have alot of space and houses are generally bigger and cheaper . Most states have alot in common and the Americans are very patriotic .In the EU we have our own national identity This is one of the reasons in London why house prices and rent are so high . Plus the population of the US is nearly 350 million and the uk 65 million a ratio of over 5 to 1 . If people did move around in the hundreds of thousand s in the us they would have similar infrastucture problem as we do .

Sorry Jim but that's what this is all about, the perception on the street.
It's the governments job to either state the facts without any spin or put it right both of which nobody is doing! (two or three or even four opposing parties can't all be right)

Also this forum is just people's opinions it's not worth trying to state facts as everybody will have a different set of facts to draw from! I'm not bothered that yours or anybody else's opinion is different to mine, it's good to have different opinions! So don't get too bothered that I'm stating mine and it's different to anyone else's!

This is just my perception I'm not trying to drum anything into anybody else! And you know what, ones personal "perception" is never incorrect! Just may not be factual or true

People's opinions on this issue will largely vary according to personal circumstances, wealth, social status, business owners and if they have married into an immigrants family etc.

I have no issue with being part of Europe but am concerned that it's getting out of hand.

There is nothing wrong with controlled immigration and I think that's what most of us want!

Well that's my "perception" anyway

We are an island race and with that mentality, we don't even like people coming into our gardens without permission.

We have a lot of space in Europe as well and although America is relatively homogenised now it used to be very different; a mix of languages, cultures and racial origins. People pulled together and made one country and there's no reason that we can't do the same with Europe.

People is the US do move from state to state in their hundreds of thousands and there are vast differences in house prices and rent - why don't you go and see how much it would cost to rent an apartment in Manhattan?

The US does have a much higher population than the UK, but what we're comparing is the US vs Europe, and there are around 500m Europeans.

The point is that if we form a collective super-state then, over time, a free market will iron out most of the regional differences. There'll still be local fluctuations in house prices, naturally, but by and large the cost of living will be level.

As an aside, the infrastructure problems that we have here - health care, education, etc. are the very things that UK1P are planning to cut spending on, in order to give tax breaks to their rich mates. Immigrants into the UK are paying into the treasury (you can't just stroll into the UK and start claiming benefits), yet in real terms NHS spending has fallen every year since the current government came in. If you want better infrastructure then vote for a party that's promising to deliver that, not a party that is going to destroy it, but is distracting you with a handy scapegoat.

No problem; I was taking issue with the way you expressed it before, seemingly as fact. Which, I think we've established, is not possible!

AndrewR I think you should stop comparing the EU to the USA and instead hold your comparison to the old USSR, for that is what the EU is becoming almost indistinguishable from.

Hopefully, it'll soon collapse like it too.

And for those who trot out the 'Britain is a nation of immigrants' line, and who need quantifying on what is too much:

In 1851, 1.5% of the population was born overseas.
In 1951 it was 4.3%.
In 2001 it was 9%.
And then the numbers jumped. Between 2001-2011 the size of the foreign born population increased by 3 million to 7.5 million.
2011 - 13% of the population born overseas.

Does this now give you an idea of why UKIP were so successful and why the average Brit is completely fed up with the mass influx we've had to endure and have now decided enough is enough?

It's a bit more complex than simple statistics, though , isn't it? For example, my brother, my Mum and my 2 daughters were born overseas and they'd all pass any UKIP "British test". Not to mention the millions of second, third, etc generation immigrants who don't come into the figures.

The problem with this immigration argument is that it harks back to some golden age when Britain was... what? We're the most mongrel nation on earth.

Not to mention the fact that we went around the world with our flag, stealing other people's countries and wealth, which explains the prosperity Great Britain acquired and which some people would still like today...

The world is a different place; I'd rather adapt than try the King Canute approach.

Also, on what evidential grounds would you claim that the EU is more like the USSR than the USA? I'd be really interested to know.

I chuckled at this too.

DTM - Do you even read what you type?!

The other thing is that the number of immigrants doesn't matter! If you're talking about infrastructure needs then the important figures are the number of economically active people versus the number of inactive ones, and as it's much harder for people to enter this country if they're economically inactive immigration isn't a big factor in making things worse for people in this country.

More immigrants do drive faster cultural changes, but so what? Our culture has been in a state of constant flux for thousands of years and will continue changing long after we're all gone. We've never been able to pin it down or decide to roll it back to what it was in some misremembered rosy past.

If we're talking about the 1850's and into the 1900s, there was a huge influx of people to work in the industrial revolution. Particularly if you use Wales as an example. Workers from Ireland, Italy, Spain, Poland even Russia came to settle.

So looking back to the 1800's doesn't help to demonstrate that the UK was somehow without immigration.

I would rather stay part of the EU, but I do hold some reservations over the rate of immigration simply for the "space" issue raised above. Yes, we can fit more people in, but we are a densely populated country. My preference is to live in a country which is not too heavily populated. Simples. Having said that, I recognise that we have the choice to go abroad if we like, so it is reasonable to accept immigration knowing that I can be an emigrant if I want.

Going back to the 1900s - 1950s, 500,000 people from Wales then emigrated due to the collapse of industry... many to England, but also to US, Australia and elsewhere. This just demonstrates the flux in population in the UK over the centuries.

I'm holding off going back to the Danelaw in the East of England... that's a whole different story of immigration !

At the end of the day no party in charge is going to do what they should for the people.
They will only do what's best to line their own pockets and the big business they represent.

Division is how it works best.

Division doesn't work, we have that at the moment and it's pretty pants. What we need are politicians that have actually held a job and lived on what they earn in normal society. These people should then understand how things work for the masses and do what's best for the majority.
Currently most party heads are detached where as Mr UK ip. Is selling himself as a normal guy, for the normal brit, it's always going to work in auster times.
I pray that this makes Wallace and gromit sit up and pay attention. If not I think nigel, if he plays the right cards, has a good chance of causing general election issues!

Which should tell you all you need to know about his supposed integrity since he's very much not that, he's another public schoolboy ex-banker ...

I often wonder about this - why is being a politician the only job where it is derogatory to refer to somebody as a 'professional'?

I suspect that the answer is that the skills required to be a professional politician have shifted to being able to read a speech, deliver a sound-bite, stick to a party line, disarm a question from a radio show host. Where are the people who were passionate about what they believed in? Even if you'd walk 100 miles over broken glass to wee-wee on the grave of Margaret Thatcher or Tony Benn you could never accuse them of just being the delivery arm of a party machine.

But if that's the issue then we're the problem. We've bought into media image, we vote for the political pin-ups rather than the political powerhouses and I suspect it started back with Michael Foot.

I meant division works best as in "they" do a great job of keeping the "people" divided.
We're all squabbling amongst ourselves while they're laughing it up.
Just how they like it.
While we get the illusion of a democracy.
The greatest prison is one where the inmates think they're actually free.

I agree with your point about politicians becoming glossy message-delivery droids, but I don't get this "it's our fault" business. In the same way as I don't think it's our fault if we get caught out by any other meticulously planned and executed confidence trick.

It's our fault because there's a very simple feedback loop and what we get is what we vote for. The electorate roundly rejected old labour, with its swivel eyed loons and beardy lefties, so we got some well-polished empty-suits who kicked the Conservatives into touch, until they responded in kind.

We didn't vote for the real politicians, so we get pretend ones instead.

As a simple point, that's undeniably true. However, what is the mechanism for voting for the people we want to see in power, rather than the empty suits we are offered.

My wife has a number of friends who have all the ability and talent to be genuine, game-changing politicians; real people with outside world experience and yet a clear understanding of how politics in the narrower sense works.

Any one of them would be an excellent addition to the House of Commons.

There are 3 options open to them to pursue their ambitions:

1) Join an existing political party, eventually get selected for a seat where you have a chance of winning, then get completely neutered and become a total, humiliated obedient servant to the party. Win seat. Be what you hate.

2) Become an independent.

The independent route in Britain has hitherto given you about the same odds as an individual sperm has of fertilising an egg. If you have a sniff of a chance, you will be crushed by the might of all the main parties and their shiny yet ruthless Malcolm Tucker PR machinery. And if you do get in, well, you're not going to be able to achieve much.

3. Start a new, political party

Well, you CAN do it, but not everyone has either Nigel Farage's access to money or a one-trick pony agenda.

The answer? Not sure, but until we as an electorate find something that interests us enough to get off our arses (clearly not minor issues such as our economic or physical wellbeing or that of the planet), we'll be moaning about this after every election.

I don't understand why everyone blames Russell Brand - he just delivered an uncomfortable truth to the complacent middle class political elite, who now find out it was true.

The party machine is broken. Or, rather, the party machine works too well. Irrespective of individual MPs what the party wants to gain/keep power. MPs who help towards that end get promoted, MPs who do not help get unselected.

Why not abolish parties? Make it illegal for anybody to stand for election under any name other than their own. Have every MP have to be independent and listening to the voices of their constituents, rather than the commands of a party.

I think it would work, but it won't happen while the parties run the country.

Indeed. So perhaps if nobody votes for the parties (as R. Brand suggests), we will end up with nobody elected and a clean slate from which to implement the no-party state, co-founded by AndrewR and Barnacle. But obviously not together.

Does anyone know whether a quorum is required under UK electoral law? If only one person votes, is his choice duly elected? Or do you need to have a certain minimum number/percentage of the eligible electorate?

It's as much the media as much as it is the people, there should be laws around how an election is run, reported on and how parties tackle debating and comparing each others views.
I think we would all be better informed, have a better understanding and most importantly believe in what we were told if things were done differently. A party political broadcast shouldn't contain 5 minutes of slating the other guys with slight snippets of we wouldn't do that. Instead it should be a factual debate and a statement of intent.
Instead its slowly turning into a reality TV show and a "dis" of everyone else, yet no quantative content.